by Sky Winters
Following Earl through the forest on her horse, Anna reflected on these occurrences with a heavy heart. The sky was growing dark, as was the trim of her white dress. It was hard to care about these things though when Earl didn’t seem to want to care about anything. Or maybe he was caring too much about things, but why? Did those townspeople and pastor know why?
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” she asked over the loud footsteps of their horses.
Earl glanced back at her but said nothing.
“Earl, what’s wrong? Why was none of our…why was no one looking at me? Did I do something wrong?” She clamped her mouth shut after speaking those words. Though he had apparently trusted her enough to marry her, she knew she was crossing a line by speaking out like this. But, at the same time, a part of her didn’t care; she deserved to know what kind of life she had gotten herself into. “Earl?”
He slowed his horse and guided it to the side; this allowed Anna and her horse to move forward and walk beside him.
“I was married before you,” he said, his gaze forward. “And some of those people used to be her friends. And mine. But…I haven’t been into town since she—since my wife…” He clenched his teeth, his jaw twitching in response.
Anna’s breath hitched, her grip on the reins tightening. She honestly hadn’t expected him to be so open so quickly, and…and he had a wife? Remarkably, even though anxiety clawed into her torso, being here was still better than being near Marino.
“She died a year ago,” Earl said, his tone placid but his facial muscles tensed.
Anna nearly sighed with relief, but caught herself and held her breath instead. A bit of shame clawed at her for responding in such a way to the news of someone’s death, and she lowered her gaze.
“And I’ve missed her,” he continued, regaining her full attention. “Out here, by myself, loneliness got to me and I…I’m still not sure if marrying you was right. I…I promised her I would be hers forever, but…I can’t. I just can’t.” He bowed his head, a shudder passing through him.
A weighted calm settled over Anna, her shame fading and her respect for Earl growing. Seeing him be so sincere—so vulnerable—soothed away her earlier worries. Now it was her turn to do the same for him. “You saved me, you know.”
He finally looked at her, his eyes a pinkish hue. He was exposing so much of his emotions to her at once—it took her breath away for a moment, making her dizzy.
“I had a terrible life in New York City,” she said, surprised when her voice wobbled at the admission. She swallowed thickly in hopes to clear her throat. “A mob boss had raised me, treated me terribly…hurt me. You saved me from all that—given me a good, safe home. I don’t need to…to take your wife’s place, if that is what’s worrying you. I can just be a…a companion, who helps around the house. Nothing more.”
Relief washed over his expression, and he nodded.
The rest of their trip continued on in comfortable silence. The night air blew through the pine trees, making several pine needles fall through the branches and to the ground; it sounded a lot like rain, and Anna found that fact astounding. She had never been in a forest before, and she had never expected such a…a nice experience. Her lips quirked up when she realized she probably would have many of those in the future now.
When she and Earl were back inside his—their house, a very obvious issue came up when she blindly followed Earl to his bedroom. He stopped at the door and turned to her, his face alighting with shock and discomfort.
“Oh,” Anna blurted, stepping back and blushing. She was still in her white dress, though it was heavily stained with dirt and sap…or what she chose to believe was sap. “I didn’t—I mean—do you have another room? For me?”
Earl winced. “No. Not yet, anyway.”
Anna withheld a sigh and fought against her disappointment. “Alright. I’ll sleep in the barn for now until we get this settled.” She turned to go search for her bag, which she assumed Earl had put somewhere in the house, when he grabbed her wrist. She jumped at the skin-to-skin contact and gaped at him.
Earl immediately released her. “You shouldn’t have to do that. We are married.”
Her eyebrows shot up at the implication of his statement.
“Nothing will happen,” he said, rolling his eyes. “We can just sleep. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”
Anna’s face became warm, thoughts and fantasies running wild in her mind. Her flesh flushed—burning with too much awareness of herself. She cleared her throat and nodded, trying to appear indifferent. “Sounds reasonable.”
Earl snorted. “Reasonable. Yes.” He walked into the dark bedroom.
Anna took a deep breath, hesitating a moment as nervousness seized her. She had never shared a bed with anyone before, much less a man. And she was still in her dirty dress, so…was she going to change in front of him? The thought made her face red.
“Anna?” Earl said from…somewhere in the darker room. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” she blurted, her throat constricting. She rubbed the place over her hammering heart and tried to think clearly. “I just…can’t see properly.”
She jumped again when she felt Earl gently grab her wrist. “Can I guide you? Will that be alright with you?”
Her widened eyes scanned over her own arm, down to her wrist and his hand. His grip was limp, his fingers ghosting over her skin—over her pulse. She was nodding before she could even think about it. “Yes,” she croaked.
He tugged her forward and led her into the blackness. Soon, her legs bumped into the bed, and as Earl kneeled down to it, she did, too. Together, they crawled beneath the covers and got comfortable. The bed was small, but Earl kept his distance from her as much as he could.
He didn’t mention that both of them were still wearing the clothes they had worn in the church, so she didn’t either. This might be the first time she ever slept in clothes rather than a comfortable nightgown, but she supposed it didn’t make that much of a difference. Her dress was scratching her and pressing into her in places that a nightgown never would, but...she released a frustrated breath. She doubted she was going to get much sleep that night, anyway.
“Thank you,” she whispered to Earl before turning away from him. She was still too aware of herself—her blood racing through her, burning her—but she was still…okay with this. If she was going to be awake all night, then this was the best situation for her to be in for that; she was simply nervous, not threatened.
“You’re welcome,” he whispered back, his breathy voice sending shivers down her spine.
Anna smiled, in spite of herself, and closed her eyes. She listened intently to Earl as he breathed evenly, his body moving the covers every so often as he shifted and stretched. And the longer she listened to him, the more relaxed she became.
She was fast asleep within the hour.
Chapter Four
Early the next morning, Anna gathered some eggs from the chicken coop beside the barn and then went into the kitchen and made breakfast. Since she was the wife of the household now, she figured she should be in charge of the cooking.
The cramped kitchen—adjacent to the front room of the small house—made the stove’s heat a little suffocating at times, but Anna tolerated the heat with determination. Her skin was coated with sweat by the time she had cooked everything, but she didn’t care; a hot kitchen would be a fantastic place during the colder times.
As she placed two plates of scrambled eggs on the table, her husband walked into the kitchen. His hair mussed and his eyelids fluttering a bit, he stared at the table with a look of disoriented wonder.
Anna couldn’t stop herself from laughing at him. “What? You didn’t know I could cook?”
“I didn’t expect you to,” he said, his attention narrowed on the eggs. He wandered over to one plate before taking a seat in front of it. His wooden chair wobbling, he grabbed the utensils already set on the table and began digging into his breakfast. “Thank you.”
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She poured two mugs of coffee before bringing them over and placing them on the table. She smirked when Earl’s eyes snapped to the steaming cup beside his breakfast.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
“You know,” Earl said, talking around his bite of eggs, “if you’re able to focus on work in the house, I can do the barn-work by myself.”
Anna sat in her seat, a smile breaking out over her face. “Really? That would be terrific.”
Earl nodded. “Consider it done.”
“Good.” She took a small bite of her breakfast and swallowed. “I did not like working outdoors.” She brought her cup of coffee to her lips.
“Yeah, I noticed. You also weren’t good at it.”
Having been in mid-sip of her coffee, she nearly spluttered out the hot liquid as indignation flared through her. “I did well enough!” She lowered her coffee as carefully as she could, but the beverage still sloshed around from the motion.
Earl smirked at her, his eyebrows raising. “Well enough? I think you made one of my cow’s cry—you pulled that utter so damn hard.”
“That was my first day!”
“Really? I’m pretty sure it had been your nineteenth day.”
Anna shook her head, her lips quirking upward as he failed to hold back a chuckle. “Well, maybe I needed a better teacher.”
Earl’s smile widened, his eyes warm with amusement. He was truly a handsome man, and his handsomeness shone brighter when he smiled like that. She found herself feeling…happy—delighted, even—as she observed him. There was also a hotter sensation pooling within her belly, but remembering his wife, she did her best to ignore that feeling.
“Perhaps you did,” he said, taking another bite of eggs. Then he pointed his fork at her. “But I get the feeling that you’re able to accomplish great things, with or without a good teacher.”
She blushed. Immediately, she looked down at her food in an attempt to hide her awed expression from him. “Thank you,” she said.
Secretly, she reveled in that compliment for the rest of the day.
Life continued on like that—sharing breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, but spending the time in between working on various chores by themselves. Anna always remained indoors while Earl spent most of his time tending to the barn and to the animals; it was a good system, one that she enjoyed.
And every night, they slept in the same bed together. The more often this happened, the more comforting Anna found the arrangement. She felt safe, sleeping next to a strong man like Earl. And though the two often discussed getting her own room constructed, she secretly hoped they never had the time or the means to make this happen. She wasn’t sure if she could learn how to sleep by herself again…without another warm body, without the soothing sounds of Earl’s gentle breathing…
Anna shook her head. Dinner having been finished for some time now, she returned her attention to putting the newly cleaned dishes back into the cabinets. Earl was sitting in his rocking chair by the fireplace on the other side of the room, the fire’s warm glow flickering over his muscular figure.
It had gotten immensely colder over the time she had been living there, and she swore the air was beginning to taste like snow. She looked at her foggy window, its corners frosted. A little thrill shot through her at the thought of snow falling over her cozy little cabin; it would just be like the cabin in her old snow globe her father had given to her.
“It’s December, isn’t it?” she asked Earl. She put the last clean dish away before turning to get a better look at him. “Don’t you think? It feels like winter.”
“Yeah, I think it is.” He looked over at her. “Why?”
Laughter burst out of her mouth until she realized he was completely serious, then her face fell. “Well, uh, it might snow, because that happens in the winter, and…and Christmas is coming up.” Another wave of excitement crashed over her when she realized this, but then she was immediately tempered when a different question came to mind. “Do you decorate for Christmas?”
He stiffened. His expression hardening, he returned his attention to the fire. “I didn’t last year, no. There’s no one here to see it, so why bother?”
“So we’ll see it.”
She hadn’t mean to sound confrontational, but when tense silence followed, she winced at her apparent insensitivity. Puffing out a taut breath of air, she walked over and sat in the chair adjacent to Earl’s rocking chair. The basket beside her seat was full of knitting supplies Earl had gotten from town a few weeks earlier when she requested it. She used to knit in New York City when she got bored or lonely, and while Earl helped her with the loneliness problem, she just got bored in the cabin from time to time.
She glanced down at knitting supplies now, uncertainty worming its way through her. Already, she thought about knitting something for Earl for the holidays, but if he didn’t even want to celebrate Christmas—if it hurt him too much to do so because of…
“What was your wife’s name?” she asked. It was the first time she had asked such a question about his past, and the moment it past her lips, her heartrate skyrocketed.
Earl was quiet for a moment. “Emma.”
Anna kept her gaze on her knitting supplies.
“She loved Christmas,” Earl said, his tone wistful yet tired. “Always went overboard with the decorations—with the party.”
“Party?”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “She would invite a lot of the townspeople to come up here for a Christmas party. I hated those parties, but they meant the world to her. She loved people a lot more than I did…do.”
She smiled and dared to look up at him. The way his beautiful green eyes seemed to glow against the fire’s illumination was wondrous. She lost her train of thought as she stared at him, but she did manage to say, “I do not favor parties, either, though I never had good experiences with them. People tend to be more exhausting than they are worth.”
Earl looked at her, those eyes of his gleaming with a sense of grief. “I’m sorry.”
She continued to smile, though a flash of guilt shot through her. “No, no, that wasn’t fair of me. I…I do remember one Christmas party with my birth parents…the Christmas before they died. That party was pretty nice. They didn’t have a lot of money, but they had some close friends.” Nostalgia wrapped around her, and it felt heavy but welcomed. “My father was so excited to give me my Christmas present, he gave it to me at that party rather than at Christmas.”
“What did he give you?”
Her throat clogged, tears welling in her eyes. “He made me a snow globe. It had a little cabin in a forest, like this great place. It was the most precious thing I owned, especially after he and my mother died. It was all that I had left of them. And of a better time in my life.
Earl was giving her such an imploring, pained look that she had to shift her gaze. He was so…she didn’t know, but with him just looking at her, she was certain he could make her confess anything to him. How could she ever deny Earl Smith anything when he looked at her like that? She was his, probably more than even she realized.
“What happened to it?” he asked softly.
“Marino shattered it.”
Earl closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, Anna.”
“Me, too.”
She watched the fire a moment longer. She thought she could feel Earl watching her again, but it was probably paranoia—or hope—getting the better of her. She mentally shook the thought away and decided that she should go to bed.
“We can decorate for Christmas tomorrow,” Earl said. “If you want.”
She snapped her gaze to him. When he gave her a good-natured shrug, she beamed. “If you’re comfortable with it, I would like that very much.”
He nodded. “I am.”
Her heart fluttered. This was going to be her first Christmas season with Earl—her first good one since her parents died. It was reassuring to know that he wanted to partake in these traditions with her. More than that, it was
a little moving. He was willing to do something good for her even though it reminded him of his late wife? Even though it hurt him? Anna was determined to do right by him as often as she could, and she was going to make sure this man had a good Christmas with her.
A good Christmas. It had been a long time since she believed she would get one of those again.
Chapter Five
The next day, Earl took out a few small crates from the cellar and placed them inside the front room. After he pried the crates open, he showed Anna all of the ribbons, fancy candles, ornaments, and religious figurines inside them. Anna carefully picked up a figurine of Jesus and cradled it in both of her hands.
“You can decorate the house while I go look for a tree,” Earl said, glancing over the crates.
“By yourself?” She put the figurine back into the crate, her eyes never leaving her husband. “Are you sure you don’t need any help? I really don’t mind going with you.”
He shook his head. “There’s a sled in the barn, behind the table. And I got some strong horses; I’ll manage.”
Anna bit her lip. Earl was a muscular man, yes, but the thought of him going out into the forest alone still made her stomach churn with worry. What if she lost him because of some unavoidable accidental? Many horrible possibilities tormented her, making fear jitter through her veins.
Earl grabbed her hand, startling her. When she looked up, she saw that he was smiling at her.
“I’ll be fine,” he said, squeezing her hand. He looked more amused than anything else, but she could see a bit of patient concern in his expression. “I wouldn’t leave you alone over a Christmas tree.”
She couldn’t help but chuckle at that, her fear twisting into something a little more…calming—or, at least, something she could tame. She straightened a little and held her head high. “You better not, Earl Smith.”
“I won’t. I’ll be back before lunch.”
“Alright. Be careful.”
He laughed. “Don’t worry so much! Have a little faith in me.”
